Silva Screen Records release Benji Merrison and Will Slater’s lush and atmospheric soundtrack to BBC Earth’s 5-episode TV series The Green Planet. Narrated by David Attenborough, the series takes place across five worlds - tropical, water, seasonal, desert and human and shows these worlds from a plant’s eye view. It treats plants as protagonists and follows their story at their own pace, whilst they strive to reproduce, communicate, and survive...

I very much look forward to spending time with documentary scores, especially from BBC Earth. It's almost a guaranteed magical listening experience and Benji Merrison and Will Slater's score for The Green Planet is no exception. The pair have collaborated before (Dynasties, Meerkat: A Dynasties Special) with incredibly satisfying results.

Over the course of The Green Planet's 66 tracks (2 hr, 26 min, 49 sec) we are treated to a truly enriching musical journey. It really is a beautiful score with so many deep and intricate themes, particularly of a melancholic variety - which I totally fell in love with.

Discussing the music co-composer, Benji Merrison, says: "The challenge was to create a score which allows the audience to connect with plants on an emotional level, much more of a conundrum than when scoring for the animal kingdom. We recorded a number of experimental sessions, using unconventional instrumentation, both acoustic and electronic. We also experimented recording electronic signals from plants, and translating this into audio. For the more traditional sound elements, we recorded individual orchestral sections, building up a library of textures, phrases and orchestral colours. A kind of ‘modular’ musical kit of parts. During the ‘coal-face’ period of the scoring, we re-sampled ourselves, by processing and integrating these modular components into aspects of the final cues, finishing them off with additional recording sessions. This created a sort of ‘real, but not real’ sound, which was very effective in bringing the audience inside the surreal wonder of the plant world."

If you're a lover of deep, melancholic, life affirming, uplifting scores then you're going to fall deeply in love with this release.

10

Darren Rea